It probably comes from how much of his early stuff was short fiction
So I was talking to @gewt about Job: A Comedy of Justice and I came up with a theory that I think explains why Heinlein's late-period work is so kinda-terrible and why I still enjoy it so much

It probably comes from how much of his early stuff was short fiction
Rule One: You Must Write
Rule Two: Finish What Your Start
Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market
Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold
I still love all of these books. I still enjoy them!
But at the same time, each of those little pieces of the plot? they're okay. not great, but okay.
So I think that's why I still enjoy these books. On the small scale, close up, they're fun.
his approach to writing was very much You Sit Down and you Write The Thing and you tell your agent Publish This Thing and if they come back "The Editor says Fix X" then you Fix X, otherwise you Move On To The Next Thing.
They're terrible, yes, but only in the bigger picture. They're the sci-fi literature equivalent of the "popcorn flick"
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So I got out some CF cards and noticed something odd about this one. Do you see the weirdness?
How the fuck is a CF card "USB Enabled"?
So CF cards are a weird beast that act as either a PCMCIA card or an ATA/IDE card depending on a mode pin.
They're definitely not USB.
And it's not like that weird SanDisk card I have which you can fold in half and plug it in as a USB device.
It turns out the reason for "USB Enabled" is because it's a Lexar drive from the jumpSHOT era.
This is a normal CF card in most cases, you can use it in normal CF card readers and such

How the fuck is a CF card "USB Enabled"?

So CF cards are a weird beast that act as either a PCMCIA card or an ATA/IDE card depending on a mode pin.
They're definitely not USB.
And it's not like that weird SanDisk card I have which you can fold in half and plug it in as a USB device.
Flip it over, bend it in half, and now you can plug your SD card right into a USB port pic.twitter.com/jeBefP2xU1
— foone (@Foone) May 2, 2020
It turns out the reason for "USB Enabled" is because it's a Lexar drive from the jumpSHOT era.
This is a normal CF card in most cases, you can use it in normal CF card readers and such
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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x